Comment by gpm
1 day ago
Because the value proposition that has people pay Anthropic is that it's the best LLM-coding tool around. When you're competing on "we can ban you from using the model we use with the same rate limits we use" everyone knows you have failed to do so.
They might or might not currently have the best coding LLM - but they're admitting that whatever moat they thought they were building with claude code is worthless. The best LLM meanwhile seems to change every few months.
They're clearly within their rights to do this, but it's also clearly embarrassing and calls into question the future of their business.
Is it that it's the best coding tool or the best model? I still get the best (most accurate) results out of anthropic models (but not out of CC).
Best coding tool is what makes users use something, a good model is just a component of that.
I don't think "we have the current best model for coding" is a particularly good business proposition - even assuming it's true. Staying there looks like it's going to be a matter of throwing unsustainable amounts of money at training forever to stay ahead of the competition.
Meanwhile the coding tool part looks like it could actually be sticky. People get attached to UIs. People are more effective in the UIs they are experienced with. There's a plausible story that codeveloping the UI and model could result in a better model for that purpose (because it's fine tuned on the UIs interactions).
And independently "Claude Code" being the best coding tool around was great for brand recognition. "Open Code with the Opus 4.5 backend - no not the Claude subscription you can't use that - the API" won't be.
I appreciate you sharing your thinking.
I think it's reasonable to state that at the moment Opus 4.5 is the best coding model. Definitely debatable, but at least I don't think it controversial to argue that, so we'll start there.
They offer the best* model at cost via an API (likely not actually at cost, but let's assume it is). They also will subsidize that cost for people who use their tool. What benefit do they get or why would a company want to subsidize the cost of people using another tool?
> I don't think "we have the current best model for coding" is a particularly good business proposition - even assuming it's true. Staying there looks like it's going to be a matter of throwing unsustainable amounts of money at training forever to stay ahead of the competition.
I happen to agree - to mee it seems tenuous having a business solely based on having the best model, but that's what the industry is trying to find out. Things change so quickly it's hard to predict 2 years out. Maybe they are first to reach XYZ tech that gives them a strong long term position.
> Meanwhile the coding tool part looks like it could actually be sticky. People get attached to UIs. People are more effective in the UIs they are experienced with.
I agree, but it doesn't seem like that's their m.o. If anything the opposite they aren't trying to get people locked into their tooling. They made MCPs a standard so all agents could adopt. I could be wrong, but thought they also did something similar with /scripts or something else. If you wanted to lock people in you'd have people build an ecosystem of useful tooling and make it not compatible with other agents, but they (to my eyes) have been continuously putting things into the community.
So my general view of them is that they feel they have a vision with business model that doesn't require locking people into their tooling ecosystem. But they're still a business so don't gain from subsidizing people to use other tools. If people want their models in other tools use the "at-cost" APIs - why would they subsidize you to use someone else's tool?
There's just not that much IP in a UI like that. Every day we get articles on here that you can make an agent in 200 LOCs, Yegge's gas town in 2 weeks, etc. Training the model is the hard part, and what justifies a large valuation (350B for anthropic, c.f. 7B for jetbrains).
I think in fairness to anthropic they are winning in llms right? Since 3.7 they have been better than any other lab.
Arguably since 3.5, at least for coding and tool calling
> Because the value proposition that has people pay Anthropic is that it's the best LLM-coding tool around.
Why not just use a local LLM instead? That way you don't have to pay anyone.
Because they still suck at real-world software engineering
none can touch any of the top models. none.